“But you don’t mean to say that this comes as a surprise to you?” she
asked, when I had finished the story.
“Yes, it did,” I said.
“O the poor innocent!” she exclaimed. “And for a doctor too! And
haven’t I been telling you about it, for years, here in this very room
where we’re sitting?”
“Well,” I said, “I hadn’t thought. I was thinking of Rose as a
schoolgirl still, not a woman.”
“All girls are women,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. “That’s the difference
between girls and boys. Boys go on being boys long after they’re men;
girls can be women from birth. Let’s be practical now. What are the
alternatives, do you say—Rose to visit about, or a duenna to be
imported?”
“There seems to be no other,” I said.
Mrs. O’Gorman laughed her triumphant knowing Irish laugh. “There is at
least one more,” she said. “Supposing Rose should become engaged—then no
one would have anything to say. Many girls are married and mothers when
they’re no older than she is now.” She paused.
“You’re frowning, Doctor,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. “You don’t like it.”
“It’s not what I was wanting,” I said.
“I’ve made you jealous,” she went on maliciously.
“How can I be jealous when I’m not in love with her?” I asked.
“Listen to the man!” she mocked. “As if jealousy had any logic, any
rules or reason! Every one’s jealous—not only lovers. It’s one of the
impulses of life; it’s a part of all kinds of honourable respectable
emotions that every one praises, such as ambition. Possessiveness always
leads to it—and that is why you’d hate Rose’s lover so, because he’d be
taking her away from you: first her thoughts, and then herself. So
should I be jealous if you spent more time talking with that nincompoop,
Mrs. Galloway, than with me. Jealousy runs through life. It’s
elemental. Listen to your spaniel growling when you’re patting my Peek.
It’s no use being ashamed of jealousy, and it’s no use believing people
when they say they are superior to the feeling.”
“All right,” I said. “Let us leave it at that: if Rose became engaged I
should be jealous. Horribly jealous. I admit it. Disappointed,
frustrated, too. I’ve hardly seen her yet, and some fellow carries her
off just when she’s of age to be a companion. It’s too absurd.”
“But that’s life,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. “No sense in it whatever. Just a
stupid hurrying along to the tomb. No time to do anything, except to
say, at intervals, ‘Good Heavens! what have I been doing with my time!’”
“No, no!” I said. “It’s better than that.”
“Very little,” she replied. “But anyway, let you and me be practical at
the moment. There are three possible courses: One—that Rose may become
engaged and then Mrs. Stratton and all her friends would cease to think
of you as an immoral man. Two—that you should invite some elderly
spinster or widow to live in your house as a perpetual chaperon. And
three—” she paused again.
“Well, what is three?”
“Three,” she resumed: “that you should go on as you are and tell them all
to go to the devil. All my votes are for number three.”
“Mine too,” I said.
“But of course the first may happen—don’t forget that,” she warned me.
“I’ll wait till it does,” I said. “Thank you for your sympathy and
counsel.”
“‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’” she called after me, with a rather
sinister chuckle.
The warning brought back all my misgivings, and as I walked home I knew
perfectly well that the happiest years were behind me and that, to a
large extent, my Rose was no more. I had lost her. Even if Mrs.
Stratton proved to be wrong and the world did not talk, I had lost her.
For the reason that we should be living an unnatural life. A lonely girl
of eighteen has too little in common with a man of forty-five whose
attitude to her is parental. It is not such as he that she would choose
for a companion. Being normal, she would choose a younger man, nearer
her both in age and aspirations: some one to commit, if necessary,
follies with; not an old buffer.
This point of division comes in every family, but it can be less poignant
with real parents. At any rate, a real father would have no such
temptation as could assail me, and might have assailed me had I not
always thought so naturally of myself as Theodore’s deputy, his chosen
nominee to bring his daughter up and cherish her; to make her (his phrase
was always coming back to me) “beat the band.” Would Rose beat the band?
Had I been worthy? Can any child be depended upon to react to tuition?
Impossible to count on it: the guardian at most can do his best and hope
for the best.
Hitherto I had not much to reproach myself with; but I now saw that the
real testing-time was on us. The real breaking-point too, for every day
Rose, as she ripened and matured and became more conscious of adult
things, would be growing towards her own life, her own mate, and
consequently away from my life and me. Once again I realized how like
ashes in the mouth the fruits of parenthood can be. The new generation
is always receding from the old; the old pathetically trying to catch up
and understand. The metaphor of a stream rushing between the two
occurred to me: almost none able to swim and so few bridges!
Once again I realized how pitiless life is, in its unresting urgency:
moving ever on and on, no matter from what contentment, from what joy:
the next moment always more important than this one!
* * * * *
Rose came back a woman grown. Not short, not tall—the right height—and
to my eyes so sweet, so desirable, that I could not understand how any
young man could fail to succumb, and I dreaded the time when Ronnie and
she would meet.
But I need not have done so, for when that moment arrived it was not
fraught with passion; indeed, they seemed a little constrained, Ronnie in
particular, and it was not until two or three days had passed that the
shyness wore off. Whatever Ronnie may have felt, he did not seek Rose’s
society unduly.
I had proof that, so far as Rose was concerned, there was nothing
serious, a little while after, when, regardless of Mrs. Stratton’s
nastiness, we had settled down to a very delightful routine _à deux_.
During one of our talks Rose was frank about her plan of life.
“Of course, Dombeen,” she said, “I don’t want to leave you before I must,
but I want to marry some day; I think every girl who is healthy ought to,
and have children.”
She stopped and looked into an unfathomable distance.
“Boys,” she said. “I don’t want girls. I should love to have a boy in
the Navy, and see him in his bright buttons, with sun-burned hair, and
freckles. But it would have to be the right man, of course.”
“What kind of a man would that be?” I asked, a little wistfully, I fear.
“Don’t be unhappy,” Rose said, with one of her gay smiles and a touch on
my arm. “It won’t be yet, anyway. We’ll have lots more good times
together before then.”
“You never can tell,” I said. “He may be just round the corner at this
moment. In any case I should like to know what kind of man you are
thinking of. I might”—here I made an effort to laugh lightly—“I might be
able to find him for you.”
“It’s difficult,” she said.
“How old?” I asked. “Do you want him to be your own age?”
“Pretty nearly,” she said. “I want to have fun as well. Older men are
rather nice, I know, but they’re rather grave too. I should hate to be
tied to a stodge. Some one who could go long walks, and climb a tree if
necessary, and ride, and be silly at parties. But not really silly
underneath, of course; and yet,” she added, “older men are very
attractive, aren’t they?”
“I hope so,” I said: “now and then.”
“Oh, you vain thing!” she replied. “No,” she went on, “he should be
older than I am, anyway.”
“A fellow like young Fortescue?” I hazarded.
“Oh no. He thinks too much about his clothes.”
“But he’s very good-looking.”
“Yes, in a way. And I should want him to be handsome. I want my boys to
be handsome, you see. But not like Harry Fortescue: he’s too pretty.”
“Very well then. Young Somers-Flint?”
“No, he’s too noisy. He has that terrible laugh. I should want him to
be amusing, of course, and see all the funny things in life, but more
quietly. Besides, I can’t stand men with thin noses. His nose is
absurd.”
“If you want big noses,” I said, “what about Harold Swain?”
“Oh, but that’s just the other extreme,” she said. “The man’s a—what do
you call those birds at the Zoo, all colours with little eyes set like
jewels and enormous beaks? I know—toucans. The man’s a toucan.”
“But he’s over six feet and a first-class cricketer,” I said.
“Yes, I like that,” she said. “I should like him to be good at games.
But he mustn’t be grotesque.”
“Surely you can mention some one who comes at any rate nearer your ideal?
What about”—I did my best to make my voice sound natural—“what about
Ronnie?”